power | Frances Bell

Questionably open and not always by choice

In preparing my ALT format piece for OER19, I thought about these questions in the context of my work as a volunteer IT Buddy at my local library in the town of Macclesfield in the North West of England. Why open? Open for whom? Whose interests are served? In what ways has the open agenda…

Digital Trespass and Critical Literacy #OER17

Peter Riley explains the Kinder Scout Trespass that took place in 1932 as a protest against the permanent closure of all the wild uplands of Derbyshire for about 12 days of grouse shooting in the year. It has been described as “the most successful direct action in British history” Lord Roy Hattersley, 2007. The other…

Intentionality, Cliques and Agency

I read two posts about in/exclusion recently : one from sava singh about cliquenomics; and one from Maha Bali on Intentionality, Community, and When Open Isn’t Open. I really like the way that sava captures an observational view of community and how it can include and exclude. She identifies that although people can have malicious…

Language, Politics and #OER17

This blog post started life as a comment on Martin Weller’s post about language and how it affects behaviour and thoughts in Edtech. The comment mysteriously disappeared as I posted it so I thought that I would repost it here and link from Martin’s post. The title of the post “Let’s think inside the box“…

Student activity exploring relation view of power

Background On #rhizo14 today, @teachnorthern asked for permission (not actually needed) to use the post http://francesbell.wordpress.com/2014/01/26/dimensions-of-power-knowledge-and-rhizomatic-thinking/ with teacher training students. I agreed and offered her a student activity that I had used over several years with Masters students who were starting to look at theories of power and how they might be applied in practice. I offered…

Dimensions of power, knowledge and rhizomatic thinking

My first thought when I hear the word power is of an individual exerting power over another – getting them to do something or stop doing something (possibly by raising a physical or verbal fist). But I am guessing that’s not going to be enough in rhizomatic thinking where we are thinking about the connections…

An informations systems perspective on learning technologies

I had to prepare a short contribution(it’s under two minutes) to our Research Awayday -I’d love to hear any comments http://www.screenr.com/embed/Leps

A political joke from Steven Lukes

Five citizens of the Reich were sitting in a railway waiting room. One of them sighed, another clasped his head in his hands, the third one groaned loudly and the fourth sat with tears streaming down his face. The fifth one looked at them, and shook his head. ‘Be careful , gentlemen. It’s not wise…

What can’t we say? What don’t we say?

At our ALT-C 2011 Symposium tomorrow The Paradox of Openness: The High Costs of Giving Josie Fraser, Helen Keegan Richard Hall and I will speak briefly about different aspects of openness and online in relation to education and learning, in order to open up discussion amongst participants. We are also keen to extend dialogue beyond the conference…